SNAKES
are amazing creatures, they need not eat very often. Most of them
require little more than their own weight each year and can fast for
long periods. An Indian python was reported to have eaten nothing for
21 weeks and lost only 10 per cent of its body weight, while a
reticulated python survived for a year and a half without a meal. But
when they do eat, the quantity of food can be exceptionally large.

Snakes can eat an amazing quantity of
food

If we observe the
creature minutely, we will find that all snakes have jaws that
disarticulate, an adaptation to the fact that their body shape is
basically long and narrow, and, without limbs or cutting teeth, they
are not able to cut or break up food, instead, they swallow it whole.
A large python might tackle prey the size of a wild pig or an
antelope. It first catches the animal in its jaws then crushes it to
death. It wraps its muscular body around the victim and slowly
squeezes the life out of it. In reality, the snake cannot crush the
bones, instead it prevents the prey from breathing. The entire process
is a reflex action, the snake responding to the movements of its
victims. When it is deemed to be dead, the snake loosens its hold and
swallows the prey head first.

The problem of
swallowing prey wider than itself has been solved by snakes in an
ingenious way. The backward-pointing teeth prevent the prey from
slipping away, and there are teeth both at top and at bottom. The six
upper jaw bones are joined to the skull only by muscles and ligaments
and can be moved independently of each other, and the two halves of
the lower jaw are also not fused together. As the prey enters the
mouth, the bones with teeth ‘walk’ the prey, moving alternately,
first one side then the other. On reaching the oesophagus, the first
section of the gut after the mouth, the snake contorts its neck into
an S-shape and pushes the carcass down into the stomach. There is no
shoulder (pectoral) girdle or breastbone (sternum) to restrict the
passage and the ribs expand. The skin can be stretched considerably
without ripping.

Life-and-death struggles are often reported when
large, constricting snakes attempt to eat more than they bargained for,
particularly crocodiles and alligators. The inevitable outcome, however, is a
win for snake. A 23-foot-long African Rock python was killed by hunters and
opened up only to reveal a five-feet-long Nile crocodile in its stomach. A
26-foot-long anaconda in eastern Brazil contained a similar-sized alligator. And
a large Indian python was credited with eating a fully-grown leopard.

In zoos, constricting snakes
have been seen to choke down the most extraordinary-sized meals. There is a tale
told by a German zoo-keeper Carl Hagenback of a 20-foot-long reticulated python
from Borneo being offered a 28-lb male goat and then a few hours later another
39-lb goat. Each was swallowed in about half an hour. A week later the zoo’s
female rock goat died, the horns were cut off and the carcass, weighing 74-lb
was offered to the same snake. It immediately grabbed it and began to swallow.
Hagenback, thinking that this was an amazing feat, sent for a photographer, but
the flash frightened the snake and it regurgitated the entire goat in less than
half a minute.

For larger specimens, man can
be on the snake’s menu. Reports in newspapers in November 1977 tell of the
body of a 45-year-old man who was cut from the stomach of an 18-foot-long Indian
python killed by villagers in Indonesia. The alarm was sounded when the
villagers found the snake attacking a second person. And in July 1979, near
Rocinha in Brazil, a fisherman was attending his nets when he was seized by an
anaconda estimated to be 2 feet in diameter. A day later, the villagers found
the remains of his body washed ashore. His chest had been crushed.

The egg-eating snake is
equipped to crush not people but eggs; and it can deal with eggs twice the
diameter of its body. Like all snakes, the egg-eating snake is able to
disarticulate its jaws, but its mouth is wider, has smaller teeth and a larger
gape, and is even more flexible than in other snakes. It can open its mouth to
four times its resting size and swallow an egg whole.

At first, the egg is seized in the mouth,
which, quite literally, stretches over the egg. Very slowly it moves down the
gullet. The snake is still able to breathe for its windpipe can be pushed in and
out of its mouth while feeding, the walls being strengthened with cartilage to
prevent them from collapsing. The egg is broken in the gullet. Strong muscles in
the neck contract and the spines on the neck vertebrae push down into the gullet
and pierce the egg. The contents of the egg are digested while the egg shell is
regurgitated.